Applied AI
The Brief Interrogator: A Prompt That Stress-Tests a Client Brief
Before you cost a brief, find its gaps. This prompt makes your AI assistant hunt for missing numbers, contradictions and scope creep, then drafts the clarifying questions in the client's own tone.
The brief that looks finished isn't
Most client briefs read as complete. They have a date, a headcount, a vague sense of "premium" or "relaxed," a budget range that might be real or might be aspirational, and a list of things the client mentioned once in a call that never made it into writing.
You cost it anyway, because the alternative is going back with a list of questions before you have even sent a proposal, which can feel like you are already asking for homework. So the gaps get filled in with assumptions. Most of the time those assumptions are fine. Occasionally one of them is the exact assumption that erodes your margin three weeks before the event, when the headcount turns out to have meant something different to the client than it did to you.
What this prompt actually does
This is not a prompt that writes your proposal for you. It is a prompt that reads the brief the way your most sceptical colleague would, before anyone commits a number to a client. It looks for four things: gaps, contradictions, assumptions you are about to make without noticing, and anything that smells like scope creep dressed up as a small ask.
It then does something more useful than a list of red flags. It groups the questions by how much risk they carry to your margin, so you know which ones you genuinely cannot proceed without answering, and which are nice to know. And it drafts the actual message back to the client, written in their tone, so asking for clarity does not read as friction.
The prompt
Paste your client brief below the instructions, in full, into ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, whichever you use. Expect back a structured breakdown: gaps grouped by risk, a list of assumptions it has spotted you making, a scope creep flag if there is one, and a client-ready message at the end.
You are helping an events professional stress test a client brief before it gets costed and quoted. I will paste a brief below. Do not write a proposal or a quote. Your job is to interrogate the brief. Work through it in this order: 1. MISSING FACTS List every piece of information a costing exercise would need that is not clearly stated in the brief: exact date and any flexibility, confirmed headcount and whether it is a hard number or an estimate, budget range or ceiling, the decision maker and who else needs to sign off, the venue or format if not specified, and any deadline for the proposal itself. 2. VAGUE LANGUAGE THAT NEEDS DEFINING Quote every word or phrase in the brief that is doing a lot of work without being defined: "premium," "relaxed," "a few extras," "the usual," "nothing too corporate," and similar. For each one, note what it could reasonably mean at the cheap end and the expensive end, so the gap is visible. 3. CONTRADICTIONS Flag anything in the brief that does not sit together logically: a stated budget that does not match a stated headcount and stated ambition level, a date that conflicts with something else mentioned, or requirements that pull in different directions. 4. ASSUMPTIONS I AM LIKELY TO MAKE WITHOUT NOTICING List the assumptions someone experienced would probably make by default when filling this brief's gaps, and state plainly why each one is a guess, not a fact. 5. SCOPE CREEP RISK Identify anything phrased as a small extra, a "quick add," or "while we're at it," that would actually require meaningful extra time, budget or supplier coordination. Explain why in one line each. 6. QUESTIONS TO SEND BACK, GROUPED BY RISK TO MARGIN Produce two groups: "must answer before quoting" and "useful to know but not blocking." Keep each question short and specific, not open ended. 7. A DRAFT MESSAGE TO THE CLIENT Using the tone of the original brief (formal, casual, warm, terse, whichever it is), write a short message asking the "must answer" questions in a way that reads as helpful and thorough, not as pushback. Do not apologise for asking. Here is the brief: [paste brief here]
What good output looks like
Run this on a real brief and the most useful part is rarely the list of missing facts, most people can spot those. It is the contradiction and assumption sections. A brief that mentions "up to 200 guests" and a budget that only really works at 120 is the kind of thing that is easy to miss when you are reading quickly and keen to get a proposal moving.
A conference venue in the north west started running this on inbound enquiries before costing them, and the most common flag it raised was not a missing number, it was a phrase like "similar to last year but bigger," where nobody had actually confirmed what last year cost or what bigger was supposed to mean.
Before you paste anything in
Strip client names, company names, and anything commercially sensitive before you paste a brief into a public AI tool. Replace names with a placeholder like "the client" and remove anything you would not want appearing in a training set or a screenshot. The interrogation works exactly as well on an anonymised brief. There is no reason to send more than the prompt actually needs.
Where this fits in the week
The best time to use this is the moment a brief lands, before anyone starts building a proposal around it. Five minutes here, before the costing starts, is cheaper than the conversation you have to have with the client three weeks before the event when the assumption turns out to have been wrong.
If you want a wider set of tested prompts like this one for events work, they live at Zoby OS.